Cold Touch (13 page)

Very interesting.

“Hey, Cooper, you make a date with that foxy redhead?” a smarmy voice

asked.
Kinney
.

Ty frowned in distaste. The patrolman tried to watch his tongue whenever

the company was mixed, but Ty had no doubt the
n
word flew left, right and

center when the man left here. Not to mention lots of crass names for women.

He was an equal opportunity piece of shit.

“She came in with some information on a case,” Gabe said, his tone hard.

Ty suspected his partner didn’t like the other cop any more than he did, though

they’d never discussed it.

“Wel , if you decide to bring her in again and need some help friskin’ her, be

sure to let me know, y’ hear?” the man said, laughing at his own dim wit as he

turned and left.

“Slimebal ,” Gabe muttered under his breath.

Ty nodded, then said, in complete solemnity, “About as useless as tits on a

boar hog.”

Surprised into laughter, Gabe gave Ty a thumbs-up. “You nailed that one,

son.”

Ty grinned. He was
so
getting the hang of this Southern thing. “Now, what’s

the plan? Sit here and pretend you never met her, or are you gonna get back

to work?” he prodded.

Gabe’s amusement died, and he shot Ty a quick glare as Ty had expected

him to. He had begun to suspect his partner was a little more personal y

interested in this witness than he should be after just meeting her today. And

that it was his interest making him react so strongly to what might otherwise

have just come across as a strange request from an eccentric local.

“I’m getting to it,” Gabe said with a sigh. Then he muttered, “She sure is

bal sy.”

Admiration. He heard it in the other man’s voice as loud and clear as he

heard the irritation. Ty wanted to laugh. Al the shit he’d taken from Gabe about

his own dating record, and his partner was the one who’d gotten al hot ’n’

bothered by a witness.

From where Ty was sitting, he figured Gabe oughta just ask the woman out

and be done with it. Doubting his partner would appreciate that advice,

however, he wisely kept his mouth shut. Final y, though, Cooper pushed his

chair back and rose to his feet.

“You going to cal her and bring her back in?” Ty asked.

“Nope,” Gabe said, glancing at the business card. “I guess I’m gonna get in

touch with this FBI agent and then try to decide whether I need to cal

somebody from the nearest mental hospital to see if they’re missing a patient.

”

Gabe wasn’t too keen on cal ing up some FBI agent, asking him questions

about Olivia Wainwright. Not when he’d felt pretty sure he had al the answers

he needed about the woman—that is, right up until she’d blindsided him with

her request to spend a few minutes alone in a room with the remains of some

poor murdered kid.

What he didn’t know about women would fil an encyclopedia, but he sure

thought he would know a crazy one when he met her.

You’re not being fair
. That little voice in his head, the one he liked to cal his

backup detective, wasn’t going to let him get away with that. With reason; he

wasn’t
being fair.

Because he was skeptical? Because he believed in evidence he could see,

examine and process? Because he definitely did not believe in people who

sold otherworldly services to the gul ible and the grief-stricken the way

huckster funeral home directors sold them fifty-thousand-dol ar mahogany

caskets? Or because he had found Olivia Wainwright to be a damned

attractive, interesting woman—right up until she’d gone al Bel atrix Lestrange

death eater on him?

Shoving that thought out of his head and deciding he’d been watching too

many Harry Potter movies on cable, he punched in the number on the

business card. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed when

he got a recording.

He left a detailed message and his contact information, then disconnected,

wondering what to do next. Wait for a response? Talk to his lieutenant about

the whole mess? Or just wait for a cal from the senator’s chief of staff or the

chief of police?

He groaned, each alternative sounding worse than the last. He didn’t like to

think she had walked out of there and started cal ing every number in her

address book to line up an army of bigwigs demanding that he give her what

she wanted, but it wasn’t impossible.

Almost against his own wil , he flipped the business card over and looked at

the address and phone number scrawled on the back of it—Olivia’s. She’d

asked him to get in touch after he’d had a chance to think about her request.

Now he just needed to figure out what he was going to do and how to do it

tactful y.

Thank her for her assistance and never see her again?

Thank her for her assistance and refer her to a psychiatrist?

Thank her for her assistance and ask her to dinner?

Or simply say yes, she could see the skeleton and see what happened?

Decisions, decisions
.

Before he had to decide anything, however, he overheard a woman’s high-

pitched, persistent voice. “You don’t understand. I need to see that detective

from the TV!”

The voice had come from the outer vestibule, which was open to the public.

There was nothing threatening about the tone or the words, but he’d swear he

heard a hint of desperation.

“Trouble?” Ty asked.

“Seems par for the course today,” he said. He got up and fol owed the

sound of the voices, Ty right behind him.

“It’s about the boy, the one they found after the fire.”

“Ma’am, like I told you,” explained the desk sergeant, looking a little

exasperated, “Detective Cooper is in a meeting. If you’d like to speak to . . .”

“Nobody but the one on the TV!” the woman said.

Wanting to help derail the situation, he walked over and interjected, “It’s

okay, Sarge.” Then he turned to the woman. “I’m Detective Cooper. You were

looking for me?”

The woman, who looked to be in her midforties, had a long face

prematurely wrinkled and gouged with heavy frown lines on the brow. The

unmistakable scent of beer wafted from her rumpled clothes, and her lank hair

carried the heavy reek of cigarette smoke. She wore the description “rough

life” like it was stamped on her skin.

She turned her bloodshot eyes on him, studying him with hope but also with

a hint of mistrust. “You’re the one who was on TV?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Gabe pushed his preconceptions away, knowing it probably

hadn’t been easy for her to walk into a police station like this. “What is your

name?”

“I’m Sue-Ann Bowles. You real y are workin’ on that case, ’bout the boy

found Monday?”

“Yes, Miz Bowles, I am.” He gestured to Ty. “This is my partner, Detective

Wal ace.”

She didn’t reply but instead glanced down and opened a large purse that

hung at her side. She dug in it, then pul ed out a smal square picture, ragged,

faded, its age etched in every crease. “Here.”

The photo itself was old, though the child depicted in it was not. He was a

cute kid, probably in first or second grade, with a gummy gap where his front

teeth should have been, brown hair, freckles. If you were to peel off about a

decade’s worth of hard living and the bone-deep sorrow from this woman’s

face, he’d even say there was a resemblance.

“That’s my Joey.”

He knew what she’d say next. Her Joey was among the missing, and she

feared he was the one whose remains had been found at the fire site.

“He was eight when he got took, right outta the playground near our house. I

didn’t even notice he was missing until an hour after suppertime.” Her voice

drifted away, years of guilt evident in the visible gouges of time and self-

loathing she wore on her face. “My husband told me I shouldn’t let him go

down there alone, but he begged and begged.”

Lifting a hand, he put it on her bony shoulder, knowing he couldn’t offer her

anything else but a hint of human connection. God, he couldn’t even imagine

it. What, he wondered, had this woman been like before her child was

kidnapped? Had she been on a col ision course with the dark side even then?

Or had she been a normal, hardworking mom who loved her son, her husband

and her home, who’d had no idea she was about to take a hard right turn into

the agonizing abyss of lostkid land?

“That was eight years ago,” she whispered. “Eight years he’s been gone.”

Eight years. Probably not the same boy, then. As much as he wished he

could help her and could use the help on the case, he had to be honest. “Miz

Bowles,” he said, speaking careful y, “I think it’s very unlikely that your son’s

remains were the ones we found this week.”

The woman snatched the picture back. “I know that. I ain’t stupid. Joey got

found four years back in an old apartment buildin’ up in Augusta.”

Gabe was hit with two strong emotions: sorrow for her, of course, but also

confusion.

“He was hidden under some floorboards and hadn’t been dead more’n a

few months.”

He and Ty shared a glance, both seeing the commonality that must have

driven her here. But, heaven knew, hiding bodies in buildings wasn’t exactly a

unique way to dispose of them, though it was a pretty stupid one. Some shrink

or FBI profiler would probably have something to say about what it meant

—guilty conscience or some such. But as far as he was concerned, it just

meant dumbass kil er who left more evidence to be used against him later.

Which was A-OK with him.

“Afterward, I did some reading on the computer at the library and found out

about another case. A boy named Brian Durkee from Marietta. His body was

found in 2003.”

Gabe crossed his arms, noting that Ty was leaning closer, getting more

interested, in spite of the spiderwebthin connection this woman was making.

“He was white, too, with light brown hair. Had turned twelve a few weeks

before he died, just like my Joey.” Her voice grew louder as she spoke. “And

he had been kept alive for a while—years even—before he was murdered!”

Interesting. He couldn’t deny that much. But not earth-shattering. Sadly, kids

were kidnapped al the time. Statistical y, it was usual y a custody issue, but

there were random psychos who went out trawling for kids. It was a sick fact

of life.

“You don’t see it,” she said.

“I do, ma’am. It’s just . . .”

“Two boys,” she snapped, “and with this one you found, that’s three.” She

raised her hand, three fingers jutting straight out to il ustrate her point. “Al from

somewhere in the Southeast. Al about the same age. Al lookin’ alike. Al

kidnapped, held til they was about twelve, then murdered and their bodies

stuffed inside a wal or under a floor or somethin’.”

Startled, he asked, “What?”

She shook her head, hard, as if angry at herself for not mentioning it. “The

Durkee boy, he was found inside a compartment in a movie theater in Myrtle

Beach.”

It may have been that this grief-stricken woman was seeing coincidences,

but, to be honest, Gabe couldn’t help seeing them, too. When she laid it out

like that, it was pretty damned surprising. And, strangely, the one thing he kept

coming back to was Olivia Wainwright’s face when she mentioned her fear

that the man who had attacked her had been working with an accomplice,

who’d perhaps gotten away.

What if she’s right? What if he’s still out there and has been since the

night she escaped?

“Even the timing adds up to something going on. The first one found in ’03,

my Joey in ’07, now this new one. Seems to me some crazy psycho is kil ing

boys every four years and nobody seems to care nothing about it!”

Gabe froze, doing the math rapidly in his head. The woman had come here

thinking the remains they’d found had been of a boy kil ed recently. She

apparently hadn’t listened closely to the news report and didn’t realize those

remains were roughly . . . twelve years old. Which put that murder somewhere

around 1999. Four years before the Durkee boy. Her son’s had been four

years after that. The final piece of the puzzle was infinitely more worrying.

Because it had been four years
since
.

“Jesus,” Ty whispered. Apparently he’d been hit with the same awful

implication.

If this convoluted tale was true—a big if—the timing couldn’t be worse.

Because if some psycho real y was kidnapping boys, aging them, then kil ing

them every four years, he might be out there, right now, with another victim. A

victim who might not have very long to live.

And he suddenly had to wonder: Despite her unusual methods, might Olivia

Wainwright be the key to finding him?

Olivia hadn’t known what to expect when she’d asked to examine the remains